My point being for those that are a little slow on the uptake is that the F-18E/F did good strike work and is a safe and easy jet to fly and maintain. Great, but it is not proven in any type of serious air to air. The U.S.N. sticking their head in the sand and pretending threats like the Flanker and advanced Flanker don’t exist is just incredibly stupid. Many times the compostion of a war can’t be predicted.

FACT: The Flanker is a threat. Other countries are looking at or considering FLANKERs. FACT: As unpleasant as the thought is, the F-14 is even a threat as the USN isn’t the sole user. FACT: Saudi Arabia has the F-15. Other countries have F-16 or F-16 class jets like the J10. All of these jets can flat out refuse to engage the SH, at will, because they have some speed.

You see the biggest trick is that with the wing spread the F14 can fly pretty far, but at a rather slow speed, while the F18E dashes in and dashes out because it isn’t designed for efficient cruise at low speeds. If the question is, deliver xxlbf of weapons over a target at 450nm away within a rather “urgent” amount of time…well…the F14 couldn’t do it in many cases the F18E can do it.

Say what? If the F-14 has to TOT a bit sooner it burns a bit of gas ( something the F-18E/F doesn’t have in its bag of tricks ) Also the F-14 is a swinger. Meaning it has a few nice high speed profiles vs. wing sweep that it can do and not burn a punative amount of gas…with JDAMs slung. The way in which it carries JDAMs don’t seem to be such a drag penalty on it vs. The F-18E/F. When the F-18E/F is all dragged out carring junk it is a few steps above being a strafe target. Not so with the F-14 which can ingress to the target at high speed with a few JDAMs, drop them, blow on by… all without working up a sweat, and refusing engagement if it so choses to do so. ( it refuses engagement against the slightly faster version of the F-18, the C in exercises all the time ) The F-18E/F can’t do that. ( the old speed is life saw ) Tell me in a slight variation of that, where the SU is the intruder, how the hell the SH is going to dominate it with not much gas or speed in its bank account? Good Luck.

I am not some kind of F-14 advocate. I am saying though that it doesn’t make sense to pull a jet out of Fleet service, that has a lot more survivability in combat then some fancy electric bomb truck that struggles and weezes to catch up to a 747 or 777 before it goes bingo.

Like what was said earlier. When the USN needs serious air domination, they will just have to call on the USAF and not let their yachts stray too far to where they might get hurt.

Later in this year is the Indian SU visit to the Alaska exercise for possible play time with the F-15. The F-15 at least has some speed and gas. If there is an exercise between the SU-3x and the SH. The USN will be so humiliated trying to swat those things…. well its going to be a bad day for the USN. It would be nice if it happens. Then it might save a few lives later on down the road.

Oh yeah. As Seahawk remided me. LITENING pods on some German Tornados. A great great pod that is only exceeded by the SNIPER / PANTERA.

You need to re-educate yourself on todays operational PGMs Garry. Radar bombing with ballutes or iron still leaves you vulnerable to small SAMs and AAA unless you want the weapons to scatter you have to do that method low. Big expensive Rockets and Cruise Missiles cant be used for everything because of the cost.

No one. No one, can compete with a user of Enhanced Paveway, Paveway IV, or JDAM on price of the munition, performance of the munition ( Killing a fixed target with one sortie, or killing multiple targets on one pass with one jet ) and doing this in obscurred weather, and at much less aircrew risk. If you aren’t using a weapon with that ability, you are basically 2nd rate on strike warfare. That also goes for the G-FACs that work with these weps for CAS. The new Israeli Spice and upcoming French Sagem AASM also fit into this category of cheap all weather PGMs

Many Russian pilots are getting a lot of combat experience.

Define “many” and “a lot” .

For usefulness in todays strike warfare, The most deadly today would be the UK Tornado. No Tornados are JDAM qualified, but the UK ones are enhanced Paveway qualified. This is a dual use LGB. For fixed targets that are obscured it uses GPS/INS just like JDAM. The kit isnt quite as cheap as JDAM but cheap enough. The F111 or SU24 doesn’t have an operational equivalent of this. The UK is also going to build the Paveway IV in country, ( enhanced Paveway by any other name ) As this weapon means that it can have absolute contempt for small SAMs and AAA, that leaves large SAMs. So the UK Tornado paired with the the German one for SEAD/DEAD, makes a nice combo. Certainly with Storm Shadow the UK Tornados have enough modern hitting power to be in the targets per sortie club, in any weather. Add to that the really good combat crew training these crews get and it is a great package. The UK Tornado did three good things in OIF: Use of the enhanced Paveway, Stormshadow, and excellent work with UK G-FACs embedded with UK ground troops calling in precise killing power from the Tornado. That is important because the GFAC can call it in even if there is cloud cover. Something most air forces still can not do.

Aussie F111s have one major sustainment issue after the other and you never know on any one day when the whole fleet can be grounded.

SU-24? Good for naval strike but I wouldn’t want it in this day and age for anything else. Not when jets that can weaponeer modern weapons like Paveway IV are available.

As it is there is another swinger that is far more useful than the SU24 or F111. That is the F-14 bombcat carring JDAMs or LGBs.

Not very fun to maintain.

Let me re-phrase that. I can confirm that Saudi jets will be mod’ed for AMRAAM and JDAM ( haven’t seen anything saying when or if those munitions are being delivered to Saudi ) But the jets are being set up to do it. The same WR people that did the work above do this too. It is common knowledge that Israel already has JDAM kits in country. So any conclusions you draw from that…. ?? In the end I guess we would have to see the stuff in writing. What you put up above sounds like a public consumption annoucement of that work. Why JDAM wasn’t mentioned, I don’t know. Either the jets can handle JDAM already or not. It says they will be brought up to the standards of the I model. So I would say yes, but without anything in more detailed writing to confirm that, I just don’t know.

What worries me is the following. A D jet is not an E / I jet. OK that sounds dumb but what I mean is an E / I jet is setup to carry big loads better when it was built. I would think the D would be load restricted ????

Hmmm. all SU-3x get SNIPER/PANTERA Pods. Make it so. 😎